“I just think that we need background checks and we need to ban assault weapons,” she said. “I just think there’s too much obsession with guns in this country, and I just think that even if it saves one life, it’s worth it to ban these huge magazine clips.”

Miller’s 72-year-old mother, Sharon Rasey, stood next to her holding a sign and said she had been moved to action after watching the parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims on television recently.

“Yes, people have their Second Amendment rights, but I also think the rest of us have the right to go out in public and go somewhere without being shot. We have to come to some kind of middle ground on this and that’s why I am here,” she said.

Ben Zulueta and Gladys Ochangco, of Camarillo, brought along their daughter Dylan, 7, and stood as a family on the sidewalk with Dylan holding up a sign, saying, “Honk for background checks.”

“We want to teach her that’s important to participate, not just to vote but to go out and have people know what you believe,” Zulueta said. “We’re here to show her that you can reach for a better world.”

Ochangco described as “insane” a proposal by the National Rifle Association to have armed guards in schools.

“I don’t understand how you can feel having more guns in a place is going to make everyone safer,” she said.

“It’s been an amazing thing to watch the families from Newtown,” she said, her voice breaking emotion. “I still get so choked by everything they’re going through.”

Leslie Eichenbaum, of Encino, and Stefanie Rosen, of Agoura Hills, belong to the group Moms Demand Action for Gun for Gun Sense in America.

“When things happen, as a mother, you tick off in your mind, ‘Now it’s not safe to send my kids to a movie theater,’ ‘Now it’s not safe to go to a shopping mall,’ ” Rosen said. “Now I think every time we drop off our kids and we watch them walk away, it crosses our mind, ‘Is this going to be the last time?’ And that’s what finally made me join in.”

Thousand Oaks Mayor Claudia Bill-de la Pena stopped by to greet those at the rally.

“I am here because I am very, very hopeful that Congress will put in place laws that will keep our children and everybody else safer,” she said. “I am very encouraged by the strong bipartisan movement going on on Capitol Hill to pass tighter restrictions on background checks and so forth.”